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The Origin of the Terms "Canaan," "Phoenician," and "Purple" Author(S): Michael C

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The Origin of the Terms The Origin of the Terms "Canaan," "Phoenician," and "Purple" Author(s): Michael C. Astour Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 24, No. 4, Erich F. Schmidt Memorial Issue. Part Two (Oct., 1965), pp. 346-350 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/543644 . Accessed: 04/01/2012 03:07 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Near Eastern Studies. http://www.jstor.org THE ORIGIN OF THE TERMS "CANAAN," "PHOENICIAN," AND "PURPLE"1 MICHAEL C. ASTOUR, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts I FOR a long time the name "Canaan" was considered Semitic. Then this name appeared in cuneiform texts from Tell el-Amarna and Bo'azk6y as Ki-na-ah-ni, Ki-na- ah-na, Ki-na-ah-hi, Ki-na-a-ah-hi, and Ki-na-hi, i.e., both with the suffix -ni/-na and without it. The suffixed form, corresponding to Hebrew, Phoenician, and Egyptian Kncn, occurs in Amarna letters from Phoenicia (Tyre and Byblos); the non-suffixed form, similar to Chna, the mythical ancestor of the Phoenicians in Philo of Byblos, was used outside Canaan. Progress in grammatical analysis of the Hurrian language caused Julius Lewy to interpret "Canaan"as a Hurrian word, formed with the Hurrian suffixes -h(h)i and -na.2 It was also revealed that, in the Akkadian-written texts of Nuzu, a pre- dominantly Hurrian city, the word kinahhu designated "red purple dye."3 E. A. Speiser understood this term as an adjective derived from "Canaan," the native name of Phoenicia, a country famous for purple production.4 W. F. Albright, on the other hand, explained the word kinahhi5 as a genuine Hurrian adjective which precisely meant "purple,"6 "Canaan" thus being a Hurrian appellative of Phoenicia as the country of purple dye.7 New epigraphic discoveries in Egypt, Ugarit, and Alalah revealed early occurrences of the name "Canaan" already in its classical form Kncn, the spelling of which is in- compatible with Hurrian phonetics.8 S. Moscati, on the basis of the new facts, con- cluded: "Kn'n is the original form and kinahhu the derived one; the name Canaan ... is autochthonous; the characteristic industry of dying fabrics in red took its name from 1 Read at the 174th Meeting of the American from uqnid, "blue purple," and designated a different Oriental Society New York City, April 9, 1964. dye, as indicated by B. Maisler (Mazar), "Canaan and 2 Julius Lewy, "Influences hurrites sur Israel," the Canaanites" (see p. 16), p. 8. R19S, 1938, pp. 49 ff. W. F. Albright arrived in- 7W. F. Albright, "The Role of the Canaanites in dependently at similar conclusions, published four the History of Civilization," 1st ed., in Studies in the years later (cf. n. 7). History of Culture (Menasha, Wisconsin, 1942), p. 25, 3 Cf. E. A. Speiser, in One Hundred New Selected n. 50. Nuzi Texts, transliterated by Robert H. Pfeiffer, 8 The Hurrian explanation implied that "Canaan" with translations and commentary by E. A. Speiser passed to the West Semites as *Kngn before it was (=AASOR, XVI [1935-1936]), 49, 121 f., 143; see spelled Kncn in the Hebreo-Phoenician script, which also n. 4. did not graphically distinguish g from c. In Egyptian, E. A. 4 Speiser, "The Name Phoinikes," Language, the West Semitic and Hurrian g was transcribed by g XII (1936), 121-26. or q, so one would expect *Kngn or *Knqn. But 5 Considered as the original Hurrian form, although the Ugaritic script had different letters for kinahhu being the Akkadianized nominative. g and c, nonetheless the ethnicon "Canaanite" was 6 Understood as *kna-q7i < *ikna-gqi, where spelled kncny (Gordon, UM 311:7). The Memphis *ikna- was supposed to be the Hurrianized form of stela of Amenophis II (ca. 1430) has Kincanu for Akkadian uknd. Ugaritic -iqna u, "lapis lazuli" or "Canaanites" just as the Karnak inscription of Seti I "blue purple." There were two objections to this has p:-Kncn. Moreover, in so Hurrianized an environ- hypothesis: (a) double -hh- transliterated the Hurrian ment as Alalah, "Canaan" was written Ki-in-a-nimki voiceless velar spirant corresponding to West Semitic (Inscription of Idri-mi, 11. 63, 64), Ki-in-a-ni and not the voiced q h, one rendered in Ugaritic by (q), cf. Ki-en-a-ni (AT 48:5; 154:24; 181:9), transcribing E. A. c Speiser, IH, ?? 54-59; Albright realized this Kincan- with a weakly pronounced c. The is peculiar difficulty but did not resolve it; (b) in the Nuzu texts, to West and South Semitic and to Egyptian; it does kinahhu as wool coloring was clearly distinguished not occur in Hurrian. 346 "CANAAN," "PHOENICIAN," AND "PURPLE" 347 the region-as, e.g., muslin from Mossul--and not vice versa."9 W. F. Albright conceded that "the Hurrian explanation seems to be ruled out, though the ending -n(i) may still be non-Semitic." 10 The original non-suffixed form of "Canaan" may thus be restored as *Kinacu, a qital formation from the West Semitic root KNC, normally becoming Kinahhu in Ak- kadian transcription, with the gemination of the last consonant which frequently took place in the spelling of non-Akkadian words and geographical names,"1 like Amurru, Simurru, Mitanni (nominative *Mitannu), HIilakku, etc. As a geographical name, it was regularly used in the genitive: matKinahhi, like mAtAmurri, m"tMitanni, matSubari, etc. Since the suffixed form Kinac-nu (in cuneiform documents written in the genitive, with the ending -ni/-na 12) was the one used in West-Semitic-speaking regions (including Phoenicia, where no Hurrian influence can be detected), the ending -n- is to be taken as an attested, though rare, Semitic noun-forming suffix,13 rather than as a Hurrian definite article.14 It remains to establish the West Semitic etymology of "Canaan." E. A. Speiser only noted that "the origin and etymology of Kncn and its cognates are not strictly relevant to the present problem,"15 i.e., to the derivation of the name "Phoenicians." According to B. Mazar, of the two Biblical usages of kenacan(i), the common noun "merchant" is the original and the ethnicon "Canaanite," the derived one, "Canaan" being "the country of merchants."16 However, nothing in the root KNC suggests any relation to commerce, not excluding the hapax *kin'd or *kenaca (Jer. 10:17) which Mazar inter- preted as "merchandise."17 It is inherently more probable that the ethnicon "Canaanite" acquired the connotation "merchant" in Biblical Hebrew because of the renowned commercial activities of the Phoenicians.18W. F. Albright now proposes either to follow B. Mazar or to assume "a lost Semitic word *knc for 'murex,"' in order to save the signification "purple-dye country" for Canaan.19 If such a word for "murex" ever existed in Semitic, it has been so completely lost that no hint whatsoever allows one to make this kind of assumption. It was formerly supposed that "Canaan" might signify "lowland"; but the root KNC does not have the intransitive meaning "to be low." S. Moscati, rejecting for good reasons all of the previously suggested etymologies of "Canaan," did not adduce any of his own. 9 Sabatino Moscati, "Sulla storia del nome still lists Kinah-na among geographical names which Canaan," Studia Biblica et Orientalia, III (1959) end in the Hurrian plural article -na; Albright pre- (= Analecta Biblica, Vol. 12), 268. ferred the singular form of this article, -ni. 10 W. F. Albright, "The Role of the Canaanites in 15 E. A. Speiser, op. cit. (see n. 4), p. 123, n. 12. the History of Civilization," 2d ed., in The Bible and 16 B. Maisler (Mazar), "Canaan and the Canaan- the Ancient Near East (1961), p. 356, n. 50. ites," BASOR, No. 102 (April 1946), pp. 7-12. 11 Cf. W. von Soden, Grundriss der akkadischen 17 In the sentence "ispi mg-leres kincdtlk, "gather Grammatik, ? 58. up from the ground thy k." It is true that the Targum 12 For numerous examples of genitive in -a, cf. renders it by sehortd, and Symmachus by emporia. the indices of personal names in J. Nougayrol, PRU But the Septuagint has simply hypostasis, "anything III and IV. set under, a stand, base, bottom, sediment," which 13 Carl Brockelmann, Grundriss der vergleichenden agrees both with the meaning of the root KNc (see Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen, I (1908), ? 218.a, next paragraph of the text) and with the context in lists Kenacan among nouns with the suffix -n, along which the noun occurs in Jer. 10:17. It evidently with Hebrew sipp6ren, "nail," and a few analogous designates any bundle, load, or burden set down from formations in other Semitic languages. Same ap- the shoulders or animal-back to the ground. proach in Arthur Ungnad, Hebrdische Grammatik 18 As it has been generally presumed earlier and (1912), ? 121. III.2.b. is now stated by Moscati, op. cit. (n. 9), p. 269. 14 19 A. Goetze, "Cilicians," JOS, XVI (1962), 52, W. F. Albright, loc. cit. (n. 10). 348 JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES The established semantics of the root KNc provide us, however, with an acceptable explanation of the name "Canaan." In Biblical Hebrew, it is found only in niphal ("to be subdued" or "to lower oneself") and in hiphil ("to subdue").
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